1. Field of the Invention
The present invention pertains to the field of method and apparatus for forwarding electronic messages from one telecommunications address to another telecommunications address. More specifically, the forwarding system is capable of forwarding the messages to a selected one of a plurality of addresses based upon user-defined data forwarding parameters.
2. Statement of the Problem
Recent advances in telecommunications networks have drastically altered the manner in which people interact and conduct business. These advances promote efficiency and convenience in one's ability to receive important information. For example, a businessman or salesman can be equipped with a cellular telephone and a laptop computer. The laptop computer can be connected to a portable facsimile machine or programmed with facsimile software that permits the salesman to send and receive telefacsimile messages while traveling across town or between different cities. Similarly, an executive on vacation or a business trip can use a computer system equipped with a modem to send and receive electronic mail messages that communicate important information.
Persons who enjoy the benefit of sending and receiving electronic messages typically subscribe to a telecommunications service that is associated with a particular telecommunications address. Thus, the telecommunications address is unique to a central service provider. Examples of telecommunications addresses that are unique to a central service provider include pager numbers and electronic mail addresses. The uniqueness of an address to a selected provider is often apparent on the face of the address, e.g., an electronic mail address of John Doe&lt;jdoe@provider1.com&gt;.
A user or subscriber to a particular telecommunications service may from time to time desire or need to change service providers (e.g., from doe@provider1.com to jdoe@provider2.com&gt;). Exemplary motivation for these changes may derive from the fact that an alternative service provider charges lower rates, or the existing provider's inability to upgrade its service.
A user who desires to change central service providers suddenly faces the reality of being bound to the old service provider because the user's address is unique to that one provider. A sudden and complete changeover is in many circumstances impossible because the community of people who wish to send electronic messages to the user are only aware that the old address exists. For example, an electronic mail address or pager number may be published in an industry directory that is only published once every year or two years. Thus, the user incurs a potentially significant loss of prospective business by abandoning the old address.
Some service providers offer their user-subscribers the option of a message forwarding service. These forwarding services operate by receiving the incoming message, retrieving the portion of the incoming message that identifies a selected user who subscribes to the forwarding service, associating the selected user with a forwarding address through the use of a lookup table, and transmitting the message to the forwarding address. The forwarding services differ from the normal message delivery service that the central service provider offers because a portion of the forwarding address belongs to another central service provider. Thus, the forwarded message is actually delivered to its intended recipient by the other or second service provider, i.e., the forwarded message passes through two central service providers, as opposed to just one provider. The intended message recipient is free to change the second provider with regularity provided that the recipient always informs the forwarding service of each change in the second provider.
Existing message forwarding and placement services are rudimentary, and often fail to meet the complete needs of the user community. Problems arise when an intended message recipient is not physically present at a location where the message is finally delivered or where the message can be received.
The intended message recipient is often unaware that a message has actually arrived, and may not posses the wherewithal to obtain the message on a timely basis. The parties in communication also lose control of critical information. For example, a businessperson who splits his or her time about equally between offices in the respective States of Colorado and Florida may receive a message (e.g., a time-sensitive order for commercial goods) that resides on a computer system in the Colorado office during the businessperson's six month sojourn in Florida. Similarly, the businessperson may instruct his or her Boston office to deliver a confidential document by telefacsimile to a telephone number in Los Angeles by 4:00 pm on a given day. The parties are dismayed when the confidential document arrives in Los Angeles for all the world to see because the telefacsimile is sent after 7:00 pm Boston time (4:00 Los Angeles time) after the businessperson left Los Angeles. In another instance, the businessperson may be driving on a trip that will take him or her through two states and five designated local service areas for cellular telephone service. The businessperson's office may be trying to reach him or her with a message to abort the trip, but cannot do so because the office is unaware of the route.
Existing electronic message forwarding systems exacerbate the types of problems mentioned above because they are automatons that simply receive one type or class of message and forward that one message to one alternative address. For example, a central service provider's electronic mail forwarding service forwards only electronic mail messages. Additionally, it only forwards the messages to one address at another service provider. Thus, forwarding services are not presently capable of sending a different class of message to inform the intended recipient that a message is being sent, e.g., as by paging a man in Paris to inform him that an electronic mail message awaits him at an office in Zurich. Similarly, where a sender addresses an electronic mail message to a network server that is physically located in Boston, forwarding services are presently incapable of forwarding the message to a server in Los Angeles if the message is transmitted to the service provider between the hours of 8:00 and 11:30 am, and forwarding the message to a server in New York between the hours of 11:31 am and 9:00 pm.
There remains a true need for a method and apparatus capable of forwarding electronic messages or alerting people to the existence of electronic messages based upon user defined parameters, such as the time that the message is received, the content of the message, the address of the sender, and variable addresses of the intended message recipient.